Part 3: Reaching out for an office of fine work.
In detention barracks, we had a unique situation with regard to leadership. The main reason for this was that most of us were young men in our late teens. How do you become an elder when you are still learning to tie your shoelaces, so to speak? Or putting it another way, how does the holy spirit appoint men to take the lead when most of them are not men yet?
As is the case with most things JW, there is always a way to make things fit the situation - scripturally of course - be that a time in history that needs to fit a date to serve an agenda/need, or a situation like we had, where a young man needed some organizational clout to be an authority over other equally young men, as himself, in order to maintain order. Above all else, organizational arrangement takes priority. Therefore, we were allowed to ‘act as elders’ and although the appointment wasn’t official eldership, it was as good as. The term ‘acting overseer’ was used and apparently the holy spirit was OK with everything.
To be fair, there were some older guys in the barracks from time to time, who also served as ‘acting overseers’. Some had travelled abroad or even had lived overseas at the time of their conscripted military intake after school and therefore when they could no longer delay the military call by the government any longer for legitimate reasons, they came into DB older than the rest of us who were fresh out of high school. One or two had been to university or college, but very few, due to tertiary education being so frowned upon by the organization.
These were the older, more experienced men that I looked up to because after all, compared to the rest of us, they had ‘lived’ a bit. They were in their mid-twenties, mostly. To my mind, there was a chasm between them and I in age and maturity. Looking back, I realize how childlike my views were of them. We were all babies.
I was fortunate enough to be used in this arrangement and share in some leadership responsibility, and I appreciate some of the lessons and learning curves it taught me. I was able to give a manuscript talk at the age of 19 on our prison convention program and introduce a new publication to the prison audience, a ‘privilege’ on the outside reserved only for much older, qualified men who had served as elders for many years. I remember reading the material word for word, since one could not deviate at all from the manuscript, and I remember trying to make my voice sound as conversational as possible, just like a governing body member. I conducted a weekly bookstudy, and the daily text with the bookstudy group and conducted shepherding calls on certain brothers assigned weekly to me. Once a week, the bookstudy overseers and the 'acting elder' overseers met and we discussed feedback on these calls to see if everyone was doing ok, or who needed help further. These were no ordinary shepherding calls, mind you. Under prison circumstances, they were conducted in a more casual setting wherever time could be made. Prison routing was not the most reliable.
Being part of the brothers taking the lead, made me feel like Timothy. I was in ‘training’, as he was by the apostle Paul. I kept reminding myself that one day this training would come in handy in a normal congregation when I served as a real elder.
I discussed my detention barracks experience in more detail in a previous chapter of my story (Part 1 above). For the sake of this chapter and its theme, I fast-forward to the time when I was eventually appointed as a ministerial servant: 3 years after my release from detention barracks and during marriage.
As mentioned in another chapter (Part 2_Divorce and Disfellowshipping), my young witness marriage began to deteriorate after a while. It began to affect my station as a ministerial servant and it became harder and harder to hide the difficulties in my personal life. I was also self-employed and so there were secular demands on my time. Meeting attendance and performing some of the privileges I had, became a real challenge. What followed more or less from this time onward, was a series of bizarre events which, for the first time in my life, exposed me to the more sinister side of the brothers taking the lead.
At the time I was well ‘used’ as an MS and a likable enough chap and so the difficulties I refer to above were more within myself, and not visible to others. I quietly plodded on in my service, whilst fearing the worst in terms of my marriage. After a Thursday night meeting, the presiding overseer called me and a regular pioneer - also an MS – aside, and we went to the front of the hall and sat down. He was a bethel elder, an ex-missionary and about a hundred years old, or so it seemed to me at the time. I think he was around 60, as I discovered when I eventually did the math. And I knew he really liked me. He at first complimented us on our diligence and attitude as MS’s and the assets we were to the cong. Then he said he was pleased to inform us that we had both been recommended as elders to the Circuit Overseer.
At this point may the reader try to imagine Sid the Sloth from the movie ‘Ice Age’ and his predominant expression and combine it with Trinity from The Matrix doing an aerial ‘slo mo’ - where the camera swivels around her target - because that’s how I must have looked, and that’s how it felt. It seemed the entire kingdom hall and its members were rotating around me and my dumb expression in 3D slow motion.
‘Pioneer Fellow’ next to me seemed equally dumbstruck. After all, we were both just shy of 25. After sheepish grins and some very strange, barely audible chortles of gratitude from us, we parted and the regular pioneer and I walked away toward the rear of the hall in stunned silence. The CO visit was just around the corner. Soon, we would be ‘older men’ and a milestone in our spiritual careers would be reached.
I remember how everything I did after that seemed to turn to gold: my comments at the meetings, the way I handed the publishers their magazines at the rear of the hall, my holding of the roving mike, my nodding of my head at salient points (the same old ones) during the public talk.
‘Pioneer Fellow’ and myself regularly gave each other knowing looks and made brief alludings now and then to the upcoming CO visit. We ploughed into field service on the weekends and we made sure we went the extra mile with whatever was asked of us. And finally, it was here! We did all that was required and set perfect examples during the CO visit, with a bit extra thrown in just to make sure…and then…relief, it was over. We knew that appointments were made more or less within 2 or 3 weeks of a CO leaving a cong. and so we carried on as normal and waited.
And we waited, and then we waited. We waited (boy, did we wait), some more.
In fact, we waited until the next CO visit, through that one and on to the next. Although we never wavered in conduct during this time, which amounted to almost a year and a half, I no longer cared for the appointment because I knew the state of my marriage no longer qualified me anyway, and I would not accept the appointment if it ever was going to happen. Strangely enough, ‘Pioneer Fellows’ marriage was also hitting the skids and there were events in his life similarly compromising his service. I only learned of this much later. It seems we were both good at putting our best feet forward at the expense of transparency.
The question eating us was: Why?...and all its cousin questions: Why weren’t we appointed? Why had no one said anything? Is this normal? Was it arrogant to expect feedback? What was going on?!
After the third CO visit passed, I happened to have a game of racquetball with an elder I new quite well. A few of us played now and then. I built up some courage after the game and approached him on the subject. I was curious and no longer cared how I appeared by asking.
I remember starting out: “At risk of sounding immodest and lacking humility, Jack, is there any way you could share with me the reason why….”
I recounted the presiding overseers’ words to us. As I spoke, Jack’s face exuded concern and care, yet also bewilderment and confusion.
“Taylor…I hear you but honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about. Although very happy with your support as MS’s, the body of elders has never discussed appointment to elder for you, nor ‘Pioneer Fellow’.”
It was an embarrassing moment, to say the least. It was bewildering. It was astonishing. The presiding overseer had acted totally independently when he spoke to us. None of what he said was true. There was no recommendation by the body of elders. There was to be no theocratic direction by holy spirit. This was one man, simply doing his own thing.
I remember the drive home. It was one of those drives where, when you arrive at your destination - in my case, home – you can’t remember how you got there. I began to think of how, meeting after meeting, for weeks and weeks and months, the presiding overseer felt no sense of accountability and no sense of empathy toward providing any explanation to us whatsoever, that two young men’s expectations would never be realized. Week after week he had posed as a loving shepherd and elder and friend, and yet knew all along his words to us were a lie.
Sometime after this, another bizarre matter arose. In those days publishers sold the magazines to the public and bought them at the magazine counter for placement in the field. I was the magazine servant. My two assistants were both self-employed, as I was. Both had unbelieving wives, and one was aggressively opposed to her husband being a witness. It was a challenge at times, for us all to be at the meetings 20 min before the start to open the counter and assist the brothers and sisters. I approached the presiding overseer and asked if it was possible to have a younger, single brother or better yet, a younger bethel brother to assist and who could fill in at moment’s notice when the three of us were running late for the meeting. The magazine counter would then always be available to the publishers well ahead of the meeting times.
My suggestion was shot down in flames. “We do not remove brothers from their privileges,” he said. He had misunderstood me entirely, for I was suggesting an additional person, not replacing anyone. Nothing I said made him budge.
A few weeks later, at the start of the meeting, the providing overseer walked up to the magazine counter, accompanied by two younger bethel brothers.
“John and Jimmy will be taking over the magazine counter from now on”, he said. “Please show them what to do.”
And just like that, all three of us were removed from the privilege of serving the magazine desk. There was no explanation, no sense of acknowledgement for my suggestion from before, no courtesy shown.
About a year or so later my marriage fell apart, as referred to in a previous chapter, wherein I explain the judicial committee experience and the subsequent announcement made by the presiding overseer that I was publicly reproved and no longer serving as an MS. (As explained, the decision by the committee was a private reproof. ) It was then that I realized, and very publicly so, that I had fallen out of favor with the presiding overseer. I was no longer an MS ‘wingman’. We were no longer an effective team.
On to another bizarre event: Not long after my removal as a servant, we moved congregations and to another home to attempt starting afresh in our marriage. However, it made little difference. The descent of my marriage into ashes continued. As a result, we never quite got into the meeting routine in the new congregation and were not very well known in the congregation. One thing led to another as the months passed and one day, through a series of events impossible to recount in sufficient context to the fairness of all parties, I found myself with grounds for scriptural divorce. Apparently, I was the innocent mate. Everyone who has been through a similar and terrible relationship ordeal such as divorce, knows that the term ‘innocent mate’ is baloney. There are three sides to every story.
I informed the elders of my decision to not ‘forgive’ my wife, in the scriptural sense. In reality I was using the legal ‘out’ card since we both knew that we were not well suited as a couple and we best cut our losses and move on. A couple of weeks later, after her judicial case, I received a call. I was in my car at the time. It was an elder who had befriended me when we moved into the cong.
“Hey Taylor, how’s things? Do you have time for coffee and a chat?”
“Sure”, I said, and we made arrangements to meet at a local cafe.
On the way there, I received another call from him.
“Maybe its best we meet at the hall,” he said. He was suddenly pushed for time. Something had come up.
I thought the change in venue strange at first, but the hall was a midway point between destinations, and I agreed. It was late afternoon. I was still in working clothes - denims, in fact.
When I arrived, there were three cars parked and after entering the hall I looked across at the oval ring of 4 seats. One was empty. I then realized that I had been duped, in my naivete, into a judicial case. I sat down and asked if this was, indeed, just that. The answer was ‘yes’.
The ’innocent mate’ was in a judicial case? How did that work?
When a judicial case is formed by the elders to handle wrongdoing, it is formed because there is sufficient evidence weighing against the person to warrant it. Two witnesses to the wrongdoing have already been established, or the wrongdoer has confessed to the wrongdoing. It’s written in the elders’ handbook, or ‘shepherding’ book. Its not rocket science. When one comes to a judicial hearing, one is guilty. One doesn’t arrive and only then begin to establish his or her case for innocence. The guilt has been pre-established before the committee is formed. A lot of Witnesses do not realize this important detail, and neither is it explained to anyone. The purpose of one being there is for the elders to determine the level of remorse for the wrongdoing, and whether or not the degree and sincerity of the remorse warrants excommunication or not.
In our situation, my wife was the wrongdoer with a third party. She had confessed to that. I was the ‘innocent mate’ (that term again).
The judicial case I found myself in now, fitted none of the above criteria. They were breaking their own rules.
The case is a bit of a blur, to be honest and my memory fails me since it was so long ago, but I do remember one detail. At a point in the proceedings, I was told that I did not love my wife sufficiently and I was partly to blame for what she did. I was read a scripture to that effect but I cannot remember which.
At another point I was asked by one of the committee members:
“So…why are you divorcing your wife?”.
I replied: “Is that a trick question? There are scriptural grounds.” I deliberately stared him down.
The ridiculous nature of the judicial hearing aside - since it was impossible for them to disfellowship an ‘innocent mate’ - the real issue for me, was the dishonesty and deviousness applied to get me to the kingdom hall in the first place. Those brothers would have known that, had they explained to me the reasons for meeting, I would never had agreed to do so, since there was no basis for a judicial hearing. A chat over coffee with a friend elder is not the same as a ‘chat’ to a group of three, two of which being total strangers to me. They knew this and therefore, in my opinion, felt justified to use more underhanded means to achieve getting me to that hall.
After my divorce I stopped associating with JW’s and going to the meetings. I attended two or three memorials in the years to come but for the most part I just got on with life. I was angry. Angry with a failed marriage. Angry over failed expectations. Angry over detention barracks. Angry with anything I could find. Angry with my parents for not letting me play sport at school, even. I wanted to be left alone. But it felt good to be making the decision for myself to be angry, if that makes sense. It felt good to be thinking for myself. I worked and existed and tried to put my life together again, piece by piece.
Over the years that followed I suppressed a lot of the memories I had as a witness, especially the ones I have described in this chapter. But when I began to reassociate 12 years later, the memories came back, and often with vengeance. (You may wonder why I reassociated? I will explain in a moment.)
When I returned, there were questions about my past needing answers. They boiled beneath the surface of my outwardly shy demeanor. Additionally, what I saw amongst the brothers taking the lead now that I had returned, triggered emotions over my previous dealings with similar men prior to my divorce 12 years previously.
In the present, I noticed the same duplicity as I had seen before with the old presiding overseer back in the day and similar devious means to achieve an aim by the elders to get me to that hall for that contrived committee case – the same ‘cutting of corners’ in the name of Jah. To this day, as PIMO, I continue to see this: blatant lying in the name of .Org and anything connected to its higher, divine aims – naturally, at the expense of the feelings of the individual.
I noticed, even with close associates, this same tendency, and so began to wonder if this is just general human nature and not solely a behavior trait of JW men taking the lead. I believe there is truth to that, for I have done exactly the same thing in many circumstances. We have all told white lies, for some reason we believed was for the greater good.
But a systematic, mental approach to be devious by men in authority, who influence the lives of others good or bad, in the name of divinity? Is that not something else entirely?
‘Waking up’ dovetailed with my search for answers to these questions, because one of the things I researched through the process of waking up, was the life of J.F. Rutherford and Pastor Russell, in effect, the foundation of the formation of JW’s.
What I discovered about the man JFR, the ‘Judge’, the ‘Generalissimo’, who had never been a practicing judge in the first place, was staggering. After reading all sides of many stories, it would be a mild description to term him an opinionated, self-indulged, duplicitous bully, if the reports were true. Lying seemed part and parcel of the way he conducted his spiritual business, from his usurping of Russell’s will, to how he interpreted scripture, to how he dealt with organizational matters, to how he dealt with the authorities, to his usage of the Beth-Sarim mansion in San Diego. When I researched the years of Presidents Knorr and Franz, it was no surprise to find the same methods, especially in the 1975 controversy. Hiding the truth in plain sight of everyone, seems to be a well-rehearsed method amongst the leadership of JW’S, dating from its foundation to present.
As recently as 2017, JW leadership has come under fire for hiding details from the authorities over child abuse. They hide documents, hide records from the courts and hide lists of pedophiles. It is common knowledge in those legal circles that JW’s regularly obstruct the legal process by simply not cooperating.
Through the covid pandemic there have been letters for elders eyes only, letters not to be read out or shown to the congregation concerning official vaccination policy of bethel family’s around the world, whist creating the impression publicly that all are free to choose their own course without consequence. Recently a local elder said in his public talk, and I quote: ‘The direction coming from the governing body is to get vaccinated. It’s as if Jehovah is telling us to be vaccinated.”
The decision to return to in-person meetings as a free choice over zoom meetings has been weirdly juxtaposed against the underlying sentiment that if you choose to stay on zoom meetings, then it’s possible you don’t love your brothers enough to want to see them again in person and/or maybe you have got lazy staying at home.
Another recent letter, also not to be shared with the congregation, confirms that ‘men’ as young as their early twenty’s will now be appointed as elders, since worldwide, there seems to be a new trend in older men in their thirties and forties: they are not stepping up to the elder task anymore. Imagine two or three twenty-year-olds on your committee case bringing their wisdom and experience to the table? Imagine such ‘older men’ trying to understand a complex life situation? Imagine the chaos. Imagine the case appeals.
Why did I reassociate, then? The girl I was dating at the time had a few life questions and I answered them from the bible. She became curious of the religion and one day, after me being away for a few days she surprised me on my return, by telling me she had walked into a kingdom hall and asked for a bible study. Since we were in a serious relationship and contemplating a future together, I reevaluated my position and a year after she started studying, I went to my first meeting in 12 years. In the months that followed, it became apparent that she was studying with a view to converting to my set of beliefs for marriage alone, since she knew that I would not join another religion after being a witness. In her private life, there was little change in her world view. And there was little change to our relationship in a physical sense. I was in no position to pretend to hold to bible principles or to be self-righteous for her sake. And I had not made a firm decision about being a witness again. After 12 years of being out, it was all a work in progress.
With hindsight, I now realize I reassociated because the JW roots run deep. Being a Witness from birth brings with it a deep network of thought processes and subconscious patterns that cannot be erased. They can be ignored and suppressed, but only for a time. At some point, they must be dealt with.
The relationship failed under the enormous stress of high expectations from ourselves and others, as I explained in part 2 of my story. By this time, I was fully involved in witness life and viewed as such by others. So, when the relationship failed it set in motion my feelings of guilt and a misguided need to go forward to the elders, which, in turn, led to the judicial case as described in the chapter and my disfellowshipping, and the period of time in which I researched 607BCE as the false date for Jerusalem’s destruction. Hence, my waking up.
For the sake of this chapter/part 3's theme, its necessary to speak of another bizarre event involving the girl I was courting and an elder, a man who had been a Blue Boy with me in the detention barracks experience. When I returned to associate, he was serving as an elder in the sister congregation of my girlfriend. We met to catch up over a beer or two and I told him about my future intentions of marriage with her. At a following assembly, he was interviewed on the platform over the subject of depression. He had suffered from it in the past and his wife was currently doing the same. After the session we were standing outside and he said how every time he looked up at the audience, he could not take his eyes off a very attractive sister in the audience. She had strikingly blue eyes.
‘Oh? I said’, wondering where this story was going, coming from a married man, and how he had just come off the platform extolling his devoted marriage.
‘I was so distracted’, he said. ‘She is truly beautiful.’ And he went on and on about her physicality to the degree that his words were inappropriate from a married elder.
Just then, my girlfriend, who was now my fiancé, walked up to us and I saw his draw drop. I introduced them, and her and I made arrangements to meet for coffee after the assembly. When she walked away, he was battling to speak properly.
‘But, but, but…that’s the sister I saw from the platform’, he spluttered.
‘Oh?” I said, with a renewed interest in his previous inappropriate expressions.
Two or three weeks later, my fiancé phoned me and said she had received a call from this elder, offering his assistance with anything she may need. She felt it strange and inappropriate given the fact that he was not in her congregation and a married man. Is that normal? she asked. I defended him in view of our friendship and said he was probably trying to be supportive because he knew me from the past, from Detention Barracks. I knew that wasn't true.
A while later, after a school function (my fiancé’s son and the elder's son attended the same school), she called me again to tell me he had ‘cornered her’ at the function and made her feel very uncomfortable, again offering to assist her in any way he could.
I called him the next day, and told him in a polite way that if he called her again, I would have his liver on a plate, scripturally speaking of course, and would use the ‘silver sword’ (New World Translation) to extract it from his body with the help of fellow elders. He begged me to not tell his wife about this, due to her depression. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was just being friendly.
I said, ‘If you were being friendly and I am a friend to you, how come you did not inform me beforehand and inquire if I was comfortable with your calling my fiancé? And where, exactly, did you get her phone number from? You did not get it from me, the logical source.’
Frustrated with his attitude, I said I would take advice on whether or not his actions were ‘normal’ for an elder, knowing full well they weren’t. At the time I was being assisted by another elder in my cong. with my own return to the Witnesses, and I planned to talk to him about it on the night of our next weekly ‘study’, which was more like a weekly catch up session to get me back on track in the JW ways.
When I broached the subject with him on the Monday night of the next week, he said he had already received a call from the elder (lets call him Wally) and straightened the matter out. There was nothing to be worried about. Wally meant no harm.
He told me that its not reasonable to accuse Wally of wanting to ‘run off’ with my fiancé, and we needed to leave the matter.
I said, ‘Excuse me? Accuse him of, what?!’
Wally had spun a story that I was creating a problem for his marriage, by inventing the accusation that he was attempting to pry my fiancé away from me and run off into the hills.
I explained to Elder 2 that my only concern was whether or not Wally’s actions were appropriate as an elder, and to tell him he was out of line, that was all. There was no ‘accusation’ under any circumstances.
What followed was an amazing display of how one elder covered for another by believing a lie over the truth of a matter. I was gob-smacked. In the interests of unity and peace I was to leave the matter alone by allowing Wally’s lie to be the final word. I was to be the disgruntled, insecure boyfriend and Wally was to come out shining like a responsible, considerate elder.
In view of the stage I was at, i.e. returning to JW’s, and in view of my fiancés progress with her bible study, we dropped the matter. From then on Wally’s wife never greeted me. No doubt she had likewise believed Wally’s lie.
It will take a lot to sway me from the conclusion I have reached that JW leadership is schooled through the various stages of receiving ‘privileges’ to set aside honesty for the sake of the organization. If the foundation of the modern-day movement of JW has as its base the duplicity and dishonesty of Rutherford, or at the very least, an extreme lack of transparency, is it any wonder that the same methods of deviousness have been finetuned over the last 100 years to be the norm at a basic congregational level today?
Jesus made clear that the simple principle of the type of tree, whether rotten or good, producing the corresponding fruit, prevails under all circumstances. For Christians, the parable can be relied upon 100% of the time. It is a failproof method of identifying true from false so that a sound decision can be made over who to believe in. When we have misguided hope that people are different in the face of the fruitage they produce, or when we are in denial because we are conditioned to not tell an apple from an orange, that’s when the problems arise. And that's when men like the ones I have described get away with 'murder'.
On the surface, individuals are sincere and caring. The leadership is conscientious and diligent for the most part. I have known some very, very loving brothers who would not hurt a fly. Yet given the clutch position in any given situation of choosing truth over ‘the truth’, the nicest elder will choose organizational loyalty and he will close ranks.
Are these brothers ‘desirous of a fine work’? Sure, they are. Do they have my interests at heart? Of course, they do. So long as I have the interests of the organization at heart, that is. They manage this organization, and instruct accordingly. They are clever, coordinated and talented. They speak well, they gesture descriptively, they advise and console. They smile a lot. They pace across the hall slowly and deliberately. Their voices are even-keeled. They are calm and collected. They even tell funny jokes. Some are wealthy. Some are poor. Some will give the last shirt on their backs for you, and its undershirt. They will cry with you and laugh with you, if you want.
But coursing though their veins is blood of another sort. They serve a structure, they serve protocol.
They ride a chariot in the sky with its lists of requirements to hop on board. It’s a fast chariot, a busy one. The wheels spin weekly, daily, hourly. They have work to do. Lots of it.
I have decided to step aside, and not get in their way.
